Woo hoo found a guy with all the carpeting I need for my coop!!!

[missnu01]

I thought to myself, what do people commonly give away free that I could use to insulate my coop?...Carpet! So I posted on craiglist offering to haul away for free any unwanted discarded carpet pieces and this guy sent me a message and he has enough carpet scraps to carpet a medium sized parking lot...So Woo hoo. Going to go get it tomorrow and start putting it up. I need some really strong glue so I can stick it to the roof...Then again maybe I could just lay it across the rafters to block the chickens from getting up there, and force them to use the roosts I made for them...I don't know. But we are too broke to buy materials for anything and I need a project!

 

[JackE]

Years ago, I had a van, (A custom van was the thing to have back in the mid 70s) that was all carpeted up inside. That was cool. But I don't think I would carpet the inside of my coop. I can only imagine how funky that would get after a short while.
Jack

 

[MoonShadows]

While carpeting does have good insulating properties, I would imagine it would get messed up in a chicken coop real fast, unless you are going to cover it.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Um.... eeeewww! So sorry. But that is all I could think of.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Even just used on the walls and ceiling it seems it would be to hard to keep clean to me. To much dust and too good a place for mites to hide.

 

[aart]

Save the money you would have to spend to buy the 'glue'.
Carpet in a chicken coop doesn't really sound like a good idea and you don't really need insulation.

 

[missnu01]

It won't be on the floor...just the walls, so the chickens shouldn't be able to mess it up too bad. I just know that there are a lot of little drafty places in the coop and it seems that the carpet would block all those up nicely. I plan on putting the fuzzy side towards the walls...so all that would be showing would be the rough edged side. If it doesn't work out I'll just rip it out.
I need something up there...Our rooster's comb and wattles look terrible. He keeps getting frost bit. We have fair ventilation under the eaves on each side, but where the roof is metal it gets condensation on the inside of it...I guess in spring we could try to cut some vents in the roof and then cover them...that would help with the condensation surely...There is just not a lot I can do with the weather the way it has been, but I don't want my rooster to lose his comb totally before spring gets here. I don't see that it would be too different from any other insulation I could possibly put up, and is it not possible that perhaps the eave vents aren't working as well as they could because of the little cracks and such here and there? Either way we'll see. I am not the first to have and utilize this idea. I think that it won't be too bad as long as the chickens can't get to the actual pieces of carpet at all it will be alright...with the backings facing in there won't be a million fibers catching all the dust and such. I'll take pictures as I go and we'll just see how it goes I guess... In my head it seems like the most awesome idea ever... but I have had this happen before, and the idea not really been that great as a concrete thing...even though it was a great mental image.

 

[aart]

You have condensation because you don't have enough ventilation to reduce the humidity in the coop caused by the chickens defecation and respiration.
Humidity, along with cold temperatures, is what causes frostbite.
You need ventilation above the roost area as close to the roof as possible for the moist air to escape and equal ventilation down low to let fresh air in.
Covering any 'little drafty places' with the carpeting without providing proper ventilation openings may only make the frostbite problem worse.

Check out this article to learn more about ventilation.

 

[debid]

Condensation + carpet = mold/mildew. Just a thought.